Pope'n

"This is CNN. We are waiting for an old frail man, who some believe is the replacement of Christ on earth, to die. He hasn't died yet, but he could die any moment so stick with us here at CNN"

If there's one thing the Pope's Deathathon proved is that 24 hour newsnetworks are completely worthless. When the Vatican announced that the pope was, well, ill-ish on thursday evening all networks (the ones I get are CNN and BBC World but RAI Uno went into full pope-mode too) interrupted all their other breaking news stories and started preparing us for the death of John Paul II. Basically the message was "He's going to die, probably in an hour or so, get a drink while we put our grave faces and voices on and we'll have a good night of mournin'!".

Of course he didn't die, well not at that moment anyway.

The next morning the Vatican announced that the condition of the pope had deteriorated even more. But he didn't die. Then firday evening the Vatican announced he was doing even worse. And still he didn't die. By saturday evening CNN's Jim Clancy was looking at me from my TV with eyes that seemed to say "I know, I know. I promise, he IS going to die tonight even if I have to go to the papal appartment myself and push a pillow against his face".

So he died. The pope probably thought Jim Clancy is just as scary as I think he is (and partisan too, so there!).

When he did finally die I couldn't help but feel a bit weird. The man had almost no meaning to me at all, I'm not a Catholic or even a Christian and I was born in 1984 so the only way I have ever known him was the old guy hanging in his chair or his pope-mobile (seriously they have the entire Catholic church filled with people who could come up with better names and they call it the pope-mobile?). In fact I know I probably should hate him but it seems like a waste of time and energy. The anti-abortion thing never really bothered me because, first I'll never have to directly deal with that anyway and second people should have safe sex anyway if they don't want to get pregnant. The anti-gay thing was annoying for obvious reasons but then again, I don't expect any senile 84 year old extremist-Christian to walk around with a gay pride flag. The only thing I think history will never forgive this pope (and us historians decide that so you can be pretty sure it won't) is the condom issue, especially in Africa.

But at the same time, while watching the footage of a younger pope, traveling from country to country, basically seeing more of the world than the average satelite, I couldn't help but be impressed.

That feeling however was soon replaced with absolute hatred for the news networks showing images of Rome in springtime making me want to be there now and I ended up walking around all day long sunday with a huge case of romesickness.

Damn catholics.